Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

If this picture strikes you as hilarious, you would have been at the right place. If it doesn't mean anything to you, probably not:

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know it doesn't take much to get me to take a trip to my father's home town, Fernandina Beach. It's a place I spent many summer and Christmas weeks growing up and one where I always enjoy rambling around town. Since I also enjoy science fiction and comic books, Ameliacon is a better than average excuse to go down.

You may recall that I went to the first Ameliacon in 2014, and last weekend (they aving slipped the schedule from October to February so that there was no 2015 con) was the second. I was working a 5x8 schedule in 2014 and so missed all the friday events that year, but as I'm now working 4x10, I was able to go down on Thursday evening and pick up some Friday events. In the event, this was a couple of screenings of some anime (Japanese animation) I had never heard of (but which were entertaining) and a raucous evening session of Cards Against Humanity, a game, which unlike many others played there, is simple enough to pick up in a few seconds.

The Friday sessions were at the local Days Inn. On Saturday, the main action moved to the Atlantic Avenue recreation complex with an exhibit hall with artists and vendors, food trucks, mock battles on the playing fields and panels and contests in the Fernandina Beach Women's Club building. I picked up some art and a graphic novel in the exhibit hall, and took in an enjoyable panel with voice actor Patrick Seitz who specializes in redubbing anime in English. He had some very funny stories such as what happens when you're in the middle of a session and your stomach starts making weird noises about which you can do exactly nothing and one about a very painfull dubbing session where they weren't permitted to adjust the script: In general English dubbing starts with a translation of the Japanese script but since Japanese is a more verbose language the English script usually needs to be altered to add extra text to match all the "mouth flap" (a term of art apparently..). Not being permitted to do this meant that the whole show had.. to.. be.. dubbed.. by.. talking.. very.. very.. slowly.

The main Saturday event was the costume/cosplay competition and as usual many people had put an incredible amount of work into their costumes (and for cosplay also their routines). I wasn't sitting in a great place for pictures, so I had to choose between "auto" mode with a better zoom, but longer exposures (ie: some blurring), or aperture mode with shorter exposures and less blur but also less zoom..

Sunday was kind of a wind-down day, but I caught a presentation by two local steampunk groups (Nassau Steampunk and Cowford Steampunk Society) about how to create steampunk costumes on the cheap. I'm not a costumer, but I like the steampunk aesthetic, so it was interesting to see. The

(The skirt is repurposed neckties..)

I would say the organizers took to heart some lessons from the 2014 iteration. This year, they got a working sound system for the Women's Club auditorium, so the presenters could actually be heard, and moved the main gaming area from the back of that room to the Day's Inn so there were not two events competing for audience ears in the same space. I did find that the panel rooms at the Day's Inn (which were just guest rooms with the beds wheeled out and chairs added) while adequate for screenings and presentations were a bit small for evening events like Cards Against Humanity and think those might fare better in some of the hotel meeting rooms. Regardless, I definitely enjoyed myself.

UPDATE 10 February 2016: Added steampunk pictures, picture of Days Inn location with banner.